gerald_rowanfandomcom-20200214-history
Guardian
A human being from an unknown time period was visited by a superficial human who says that the man's future self has sent him this space vessel. The man takes that ship, finds it is equipped with a time machine, and sets off to protect the universe, becoming known as the Guardian. Start Learning to master the spacecraft and it's time traveling abilities, the Guardian was accompanied by his human friend, Sam, the only person who knows the Guardian's true name. Following the deliverers instructions, he goes to certain coordinates in time and space, accompanied by Sam, and meets the Seeker and the Chronicler. Remembering the words the deliverer spoke to him, he introduces himself under the pseudonym "Guardian" as a security measure. The Seeker and the Chronicler had received warnings about his arrival. Originally, when the Guardian first had this power he abused it slightly in matters of gambling and such, despite the Seeker's disapproval. After attracting attention through photographs separated by decades and nearly being murdered at the hands of Nukfuk and a human criminal empire two seperate times, he stopped and returned to the Seeker and the Chronicler. He spent a majority of his fortune to construct a remote mansion to house himself, Sam, the Chronicler and the Seeker with guest rooms and storage rooms. Due to his time traveling and various encounters with powers greater than anything human, he is now ten times as old as Sam. During the time travels, he encountered a group of free Tog'Ratha living on a reservation and their prophet shaman Nhag'Lef. In this time, he developed a relationship with the Seeker where the Ancient was his mentor. First Stage The Guardian soon encountered a radical human terrorist known as the Ravager. The Ravager was criminally insane with his own means of time travel and the Guardian quickly formed an arch-nemesis in the Ravager. The Guardian, starting to feel more confident, accepted several more people into his group. Friends John and Kyle. Then Lucy Sumner, who developed a romantic relationship with Kyle. The Guardian befriended a man named Kent, who didn't stay in the Guardian's crew but rather created a militia group to keep a Cesspool city free. The beginning of the end started when the Guardian made a crucial error, resulting in all his people trapped in an empty city under attack by a Nargarrg army and with John presumed dead aboard the drifting ruin of the Seeker's time vessel. John had, in reality, salvaged a spacesuit and was trying to go back in time, not realizing that in the Nargarrg attack had damaged the reactor and resulted in a time meltdown as the ship collapsed into a black hole. John was transformed into a human time machine and teleported down to the planet's surface, where he eliminated the attacking Nargarrg army. Unable to control his power, he slipped away in front of them. Kent and his militia returned to the Cesspool, and the Guardian moved on. After that, the Guardian became involved in a corrupt organization's experiments on an icy world that resulted in the deaths of Sam and Kyle. The Guardian and Lucy sadly continued their search for the Temporal Matrix and Genesis Engine. Soon after, Tog'Ratha slaves unearthed a hidden Old Being in the core of a solid iron planet. Having kidnapped a Collective and planned to use him to access the vast collective consciousness, but Kent sacrificed his life to kill the hostage, answering the plea "emodime," which is a Collective saying "kill me." Believing himself to be the desired host, the Guardian prepares to sacrifice himself to destroy the Old Being, but it was revealed that Lucy was the intended host. She urges him, "emodime." After failing to kill her, he was mortally wounded and left for dead. Lucy managed to destroy herself and the Old Being, and the Guardian teleported back to the manor to tell the Seeker to put him in stasis in a chrysalis chamber and find John Beckett to pilot the Matrix. They tracked him down and John activated the Matrix, and used it's power to save the Guardian. The Guardian retained trace amounts of Old Being energy in his systems, giving him bizarre abilities. Aftermath of First Stage and the Old Order Endgame Now in possession of the Temporal Matrix, the Guardian and his Ancient companions soon came back into contact with a mysterious organization that has haunted them since the very beginning. This organization, known as the Old Order, is investigated and discovered to have a massive computer network hosting the preserved consciousness of a rodent-like sentient creature from the future, of the same race that created the planet-sized robots, named Fi:msor Br'oq'fsit. They planned to use the Genesis Engine to revive the alien species from the future that they worshipped, but the Guardian and his companions stole the Engine and became targeted by the Order. They assassinated Br'oq'fsit with a computer virus and started inquiring after nuclear power to power the Engine. Arriving at the spaceship equivalent of a nuclear submarine to acquire knowledge, the remaining Order members staged a terrorist attack. Sealing themselves from the attackers by air locks, the Guardian and the Seeker were separated and the Seeker sacrificed himself to vent radiation into the ship and kill the terroists while the workers were sheltered by emergency air locks. The Guardian talked to the Seeker as he died, and retrieve his Lockdown Orb and returned it to the Chronicler. Second Stage The Guardian's next series of companions, collected over several years, consisted of Aaron, Tom and Kate. The Guardian is often reminded of his original crew by these three, since Kate and Tom are like Kyle and Lucy and Aaron and Tom were friends like John and Kyle. John had been living in medieval Europe on Earth and had collected seven diehard followers, knights. John and his knights. He and his followers flew across space separately from the Guardian. The Chronicler became sadder after the death of the only other member of his race. After a shootout with the Ravager in space, the Guardian was adrift and found himself picked up by a massive planet-creature called Father, who was leaving the Galaxy due to a vision he had had. He warned the Guardian to beware of the dead fire, midnight and the pit. Father was hiding something, but the Guardian didn't find out what it was before he was delivered back to his spaceship. A portal to another place opened and in order to close it, the Chronicler entered to the other side and sacrificed himself. His final words were garbled radio transmissions telling the Guardian that the key to entering the gateway world was to bring the Chronicler's notes to Gerald Rowan. Without him, and no genetic material, they cannot bring back the Ancients. Soon after, on a desolate moon being mined, the mythic Chasm of Time is discovered. Tied to a line but pulled in by the dark gravity of the Chasm, the Guardian cuts his line so that Kate and Aaron can be freed and make it to the spaceship while Tom remains in the mining colony dangerously poised on the lip of the chasm. The Guardian shouted a warning to them as he fell, about Father and "displacement." Tom and the miners left in the colony watch as Kate and Aaron enter the landing ship and fly back up to the large cruiser. An orbiting station contacts the colony with radio. Tom soon learns what "displacement" means. The Guardian entered the Chasm of Time and displaced some other thing in time and space. The thing that emerged becomes known as the Midnight Creature. It possessed the crew until Tom dropped the station into the Chasm, displacing a cold grey conflagration. An ancient Old Being, from which Kate and Aaron flee back to the manor. They take the S'cha-ckl'ueu Arc to a Gondj-Rhyde'i reservation north of the Tog'Ratha reservation to decode it, but find themselves attacked by dragons. After escaping, they return home and John comes looking to collect the Arc, having stored the Engine inside the Matrix already. He goes searching for the Guardian. The Guardian is now decades older, an old man dying of the power of the Old Being infesting him, tired and slightly insane from decades of dueling demons in the dark. John finds him washed up on a beach hundreds of years in the future, clinging to a piece of driftwood. John uses the power of the Matrix to rewind the Guardian and youthen him and also reset the death clock of the Old Being's power again. The Guardian then finds that the Ravager is attempting to open a Voyar Cylinder from the future containing hundreds of malfunctioning violent IAUs. Taking the Ravager prisoner in spite of the Ravager attempting to goad the Guardian into killing him, they return to the manor. One of the Ravager's contacts, Uncle Jack, and his group of human supremacists attack the manor. All seven of John's Knights die defending the place, while John himself was gone looking for the Ravager. Aaron's leg is blown off as he exchanges fire from atop the staircase and Kate drags him to safety while shooting back at the attackers. The Guardian expends a massive use of energy to eliminate the attackers. Kate takes Aaron to the equipment room to heal him, and the Guardian wanders away in a dark fury. He descends into the basement and coldly executes the Ravager at point blank range. He sits there in the dark, thinking for some time, and then goes back upstairs. He finds Aaron unconscious and hooked up to medical equipment. More interesting is the chrysalis chambers hooked up to the Genesis Engine. As he watches, they open. The middle one contains a pile of damp mud, but the right one has a sleeping Kate in it. She seems different, taller and slimmer with pointed features. But from the right rises something new. He seems human, but has features of an Ancient. As the Guardian watches he straps on an ornate gauntlet. The Guardian finds his voice and calls out. The Ancient introduces himself as Lossoriawath. Then he blasts at the Guardian from his gauntlet. The Guardian barely summons enough energy to deflect in and looses his balance and falls. Lossoriawath charges up for another blast, but turns the energy into a shield as he comes under fire. Aaron, pale and shaky on a crutch shooting a handgun. From thirty feet away, Lossoriawath rips the crutch away from Aaron and drops him. When John returns, Lossoriawath grabs Kate and flees in the Temporal Matrix, which also contains the Arc. With the manor burned to the ground, the Guardian, John and Aaron take the Genesis Engine and everything else of value and board the ship and leave the ruins behind. Aftermath of Second Stage and the Fall of the Human Supremacists The Guardian was drastically changed after the destruction of the manor, becoming much darker and violent. A turncloak from the human supremacists, named Rorgan joins his crew. Rorgan is violent and sadistic, yet the Guardian tolerates him, claiming that they need him when he is actually questioning why Rorgan should be stopped at all. The Guardian devoted himself to hunting down Jack and his men. John vanished to search for Tom and had not returned. In tracking Jack, the Guardian arrived moments prior to a devastating strike on a multicultural-accepting library, and pursued Jack rather than defuse the bomb. However, he arrived from the future to handle the bomb as his younger self chased Jack, and managed to install a tracking device on his ship before he escaped. The Guardian defused the bomb and gained a librarian aboard his crew, Yvonne. He also found forest hippie Ted who joined his crew. Tracking the ship took him to a crashed ship. The Ravager's, right where the Guardian had shot it down on the Third world. Something had been gutted from the hold, and the supremacists had no doubt gone looking for it on the planet. The final showdown ensued where the Guardian trapped the supremacists inside a Third asylum where thy were taken down one by one by insane Third except for Jack, who the Guardian took for his own. Instead of killing him, the Guardian left Jack. This gave him a sense of closure, and lifted the cloud off his soul. He returned to the ship and immediately fired Rorgan. He left Jack there, assuming he would die or lose the will to fight. Third Stage Ted, Yvonne, Rorgan, Aaron and the Guardian. Ted becomes horrifically mutated. The Guardian relieves Rorgan. The Guardian starts tracking the long-lost Voyar Cylinder and is captured by Cyberts he and Ted watch from cages as the Cyberts open the cylinder and unleash a horde of insane IAUs into the Cybert Central Processing City. The Guardian and Ted escape and are separated. Ted begins his own journey. The Guardian uses an Ancient weapon to drain the flora and fauna of an oasis island to power a bomb to destroy the IAUs. The IAU/Cybert war begins soon after. Trumanium IAUs are built and dispatched as assassins, one after the Guardian himself. After being hunted on a sandy world, the Guardian is rescued by an EMP blast sent by two war-protesting IAUs, PL3-42A and PL3-12C, known as Foray and Wonsey to the Guardian. With their help, he cripples both the Cyberts and the IAUs, forcing them to make peace. Foray joins the Guardian's crew but Wonsey stays to keep relations stable. The trumanium army are melted back into pure trumanium, and the ship carrying it is hijacked and pirated. The Guardian discovers Jack is behind it. After fighting the revived Ravager and killing Jack once and for all, the Guardian gains back his edge. Using some of the small amount of trumanium they rescued, Foray recieves an upgrade to repair the damage he gained in his fight with Uncle Jack in his trumanium exosuit. Unsure how to procede, the Guardian finds himself back on Earth facing creatures of ice and water who move incredibly fast. After defeating that colony, he decides to send John back out to look for Lossoriawath while the Guardian tracks down the Ravager. He visits Nhag'Lef, who has no information on the Ravager but gives a prophecy concerning Lossoriawath. If he is devoured by the Time Serpent then human civilization will end as a result. The dead fire spreads to a star and begins transforming it. After dueling Diamond Hitler, the Guardian finally manages to find the Ravager and disable his ship. The Ravager attempts to crash into the Guardian, but John arrives in the Matrix and safely teleports the Guardian to the future. John advises the Guardian let someone else capture the Ravager for trial, as he has found Lossoriawath. Needing an edge and knowing they cannot get it themselves, the Guardian calls in an old friend for his revenge. Rorgan is out in charge of the attack on the Ravager's drifting ship. The Guardian, Foray and Aaron go to the tomb of the Other while John and Yvonne prepare to hide in the Tog'Ratha reservation. Foray is possessed, but the Other quickly teleports them to their destination. The Guardian is lost in the green pathways, and nearly drifts into the white light, but uses the kickback from his gun to propel him back onto the path and reach the Celestial Gatekeeper, who he proceeds to play in a game of chess which John later claims lasted for about a month. While playing, the trio observe the Celestial Timekeeper and the doomsday clock. The Guardian wins, and they have to choose who shall pass through the gate. Aaron volunteers and is accepted. He goes through and the Guardian and a wounded Foray return to the tomb, which they quickly escape. Aaron will meet them at Lossoriawath's dwelling for the final attack. Yvonne informs them that the Gondj-Rhyde'i who's lands were destroyed to mine trumanium came south and butchered the Tog'Ratha reservation, killing Nhag'Lef. Rorgan and his team are dead, although the Ravager should be as well but his body was nowhere to be found. The Guardian, John, Foray and Yvonne move in on Lossoriawath's dwelling, defeat guardians such as the Blue Pestilence, Piranha Birds, the horrible ice creatures, dragons, robots, airborne plagues, and reach Lossoriawath, who is also with a recovering Ravager. John takes out the Ravager, Foray and the Guardian pursue Lossoriawath, until Kate appears with a gun and still no memory. Aaron arrives, insane from what he saw beyond the gate, and with his is Tom. Tom reminds Kate and she turns her fire on Lossoriawath. Lossoriawath flees in the Matrix. The Ravager overpowers Tom and Yvonne and tries to run for it, but is caught by Ted and dragged off to an unknown, yet doubtless terrible fate. They pursue Lossoriawath, trapping him in the path of Tyat'Naghra. Lossoriawath traps them and flees again. The Serpent pursues him. The Guardian sacrifices his power to drain the machine of it's power and allow Kate, John and Foray to follow Lossoriawath to the time when human civilization ends. Lossoriawath is caught unawares, tries to flee again and is devoured. The three, now the legendary Apocalypse Lords, trap themselves and Tyat'Naghra inside the Arc aboard the Matrix and send themselves back to the Guardian, who returns to Aaron, Tom and Yvonne. Aftermath of Third Stage and Tom's Departure The Guardian once and for all drives the poisonous Old energy from his systems, although saddened at the loss of his last connection to Lucy. Aaron's memory is wiped, which leaves him partially cured yet prone to fits. The ice creatures have appeared again, harassing an Antartic research crew. After the Guardian's plan fails, several creatures enter the base and the others break off in pursuit of the lost Tom. Freezing to death despite his gear and pursued by creatures forestalled only by sight, Tom eventually collapses of fatigue in the tundra. Prone, he is barely conscious as he watches the ice creatures, every blink allowing them to come closer until some thing arrives and destroys them. The Guardian drains the creatures out of the base and tracks down Tom. Tom's stories match the legends of the mythic Thing-Over-The-Mountains, a powerful gatekeeper to a primordial realm of unmatched desolation. The Guardian then has to save Earth from a comet strike that it turns out would have never hit Earth at all, but rather obliterated a squad of exterminators called on to blanket bomb Earth with gas bombs to clear the way for an interplanetary construction company. After debate with Yvonne, he manages to disable the launching mechanisms on the bombs so if they were to try and launch, they would jam and flood the ships with gas. This stalls time for the Guardian to alert the Marõid Ministry of Extraterrestrial Ecological Preservation (MEEP) to conduct an investigation on the planet before allowing the exterminators to cleanse it. Radical sects of xenophiles transplant a near extinct species from their freezing home world to the relatively warm Antarctic. These are the zombie-creating insects that killed Kyle and Sam. The Guardian tests Tom's word, nearly getting Yvonne and Tom killed, in having the Thing-Over-The-Mountains lured out and destroying the insects, which he later regrets as it destroyed the first extraterrestrial wildlife preservation on Earth. Tom then retires from the Guardian's crew, and the Guardian congratulates him on being the first of his companions to live to retirement. Fourth Stage In the wake of the Triangle Holocaust and Tom's departure, the Guardian starts seeking Ted and the Ravager, and soon discovers they may well be in the same place after finding that Ted abducted the Ravager after the foray into Lossoriawath's dwelling. Tracking Ted the same way John was tracked by the Seeker and the Chronicler all those years ago, he arrives to find Ted has assimilated an entire forest world and reshaped it as a massive tentacled thing. The Guardian meets with one of the hosts and is horrified by what his former companion has turned himself into. They argue and Ted expels the Guardian. The Guardian steals a biological sample, outraging Ted. The Guardian soon receives a message that Ted's host has taken Tom hostage on Earth. Recruiting Kent's surviving squad members as backup, the Guardian sneaks in and frees Tom, but Ted discovers him and a fight breaks out, the Guardian and Tom and the rest escape to the militia's cruiser with a hostage and return to Ted's planet to delegate. Somehow, Nok became infected and attempted sabotage. Furious, Aaron beat Nok to death with his trumanium leg. More and more become infected until it is revealed Ted infected Tom and allowed the Guardian to take him back. Cornered by Ted and five other hosts, the Guardian reveals his victory. Using the samples, he altered them to have an inhibitor gene over the fungus's telepathic ability. He inoculated Aaron and Yvonne with this variation and infected himself with the original variation. He predicted when the fungus would germinate in his brain and made sure to be in contact with Ted when it did. He says Ted crushed other minds as he accumulated them because he grew in size like a piles of leaves, and if that's what he is then the Guardian is a single brick. Aaron and Yvonne grab a single host and inject him with the inhibitor strain to isolate Ted in that body as the Guardian takes over the others. They lock him in a plastic cube as the Guardian takes over all the hosts. The Ravager, dead from neglect down on the planet below, regenerated in the cube and found Nok's bomblet rifle and stormed the bridge, killing everyone except Ted. Destroying the hosts on the ship gave the Guardian only one body to control, and he reached up and grabbed the ship with a massive tentacle. The Ravager escaped and the Guardian budded a body grown to look like his original. He puts himself and Ted into the Genesis Engine to transform themselves back into humans and spends a few years building himself a ship to fly himself and the cube into the sun to render both himself and the Ravager mortal again. He sends Ted to live in a wilderness camp as he hunts the Ravager. When he finally finds him, he returns to bid farewell to Ted after one year. Ted expresses his regret, and the Guardian departs. Destroying the Ravager's weapon stash, the Guardian is shot and killed by the Ravager. Going to the Matrix, the Ravager accidentally opens the Arc and destroys history, creating a Disrupted Timeline. Aftermath of Fourth Stage, Disturbed Timeline and the Moonlight Game In the Disturbed Timeline, the Guardian was reborn and united with Sean Clements to survive as everything ever converged on a Thrakr city. Although initially clashing with Zach Dawson as they searched for the Ravager and the Matrix, they discovered they are this mistaken universe's version of the Apocalypse Lords (nicknamed the "Armageddon Lords" by Sean), and each gained dragon mounts to match their personalities. The Guardian takes a Northern Dragon, the intelligent and speech-capable species and the three enter into the battle in the city. Opening the Arc, the dragons devour Tyat'Naghra and the original Apocalypse Lords join the Armageddon Lords as the city wars against itself. Leading a a charge of Thrakr magicians into the elves, the Guardian disappears until the final fight with the Ravager. Zach restarts the universe with the Matrix, but still confused. The Guardian and the other two Armageddon Lords become the dragonlords of this new world and the Apocalypse Lords become the leaders of an organization made to control ultra-powerful beings. Thousands of years after the Guardian's death fighting Sean's enemies, the Blaubist leads Gerald Rowan to the place of the dragonlords and he uses his memories of the Chronicler's notes obtained in the original universe to return everyone to their original timelines. The Guardian, dead in his home world, has his soul harvested by the Celestial Gamekeeper as well as the others who have played an important role in his life. The Guardian wins the game by freeing the Gamekeeper's game and escape the Moonlight Game with an aged Chronicler, Foray, John, Nhag'Lef Lucy and robot-armed Kyle. Despite all the death, the farewells are not yet over. Kyle and Lucy retire to Earth, but the Guardian remembers Tom's death and sadly insists he wipes their memories. John also wants to be left on Earth, but retain his memories so he can stay in communication with the Guardian. Lucy and Kyle will remember each other, but not John or the Guardian. John becomes a police officer and keeps an eye on Kyle and Lucy to make sure they are safe. The Guardian leaves them and drops off Nhag'Lef. He then races to stop the spread of the newly freed Old Beings. Fifth Stage Foray, the Chronicler and the Guardian soon discover Ted is still somehow alive, despite having been destroyed by the Midnight Creature in the maze under the moon. Ted remains in the camp, and Nhag'Lef returns to the Tog'Ratha reservation before it was destroyed by Gondj-Rhyde'i. The Sunoc summon Fhesvou but the Guardian hijacks the ceremony and uses Fhesvou to assassinate Ojgesxgikk and he quickly goes to that planet before it's secrets are lost. He finds Tralngharask's head with his pipe rammed between his lips on a spike on Ojgesxgikk's former world, having been murdered and left as a warning by something of great power. After slowly loosing ground, the Guardian has no choice but for him and his new companions to release The Other and The One simultaneously, creating the Other One and wiping the Old Beings from the sky. The Guardian is freed of his fear and soon starts collecting crew members again. Rosa, Laura, Tyros and the first pure alien, a Sklegge named Cuik. The Chronicler organizes his notes and dies of old age. After rescuing Kligge from his future predecessor's assassination attempt, Cuik joins the pirate crew. The Guardian and Foray go to a place where Dr. Churchill and the Ravager are breeding new humans "newmans" from Nargarrg, Ancient and human DNA. They are captured. Rosa goes to negotiate, but is taken as well. Laura and Tyros steal the Ravager's ship to use it's weapons. Guardian and Foray break free. They discover a trail and follow it to find the genetic machine powering a cell. The slime trail leads into the cell. Out steps Lossoriawath, rejuvenated, who straps on his Gauntlet. Churchill boasts he has betrayed the Ravager and gained an army of newmans. The Ravager brutally kills Churchill in a rage and joins the Guardian. Side by side they fight Lossoriawath. The Ravager is melted like candle wax and the Guardian orders Laura to fire the Ravager's rocket to the coordinates being sent from the inanimate Lockdown Orb. He wraps Lossoriawath in a bear hug and brings down the rocket right on top of them. The newmans are scattered without a leader. Laura discovers that she has killed the Guardian. Aftermath of Fifth Stage and Will Tyros, Laura, Rosa and Foray read the Guardian's will. He divides all his remaining possessions between his surviving and deceased companions. They meet with all the survivors on John's Earth for the funeral. Ted, Dack, Lance, John. Kyle and Lucy are not present, but they are given gifts secretly by John as part of the Guardian's will. As the final part of the will, Tyros delivers the ship back to the younger Guardian. At the Guardian's funeral, nobody bothers to reprimand Ted for having left the camp. He leaves his gun to Tyros and Tyros decides to become the next Guardian. As the Specter Due to the effects of the reality missile, the Guardian and Lossoriawath were reanimated via a Phantom Projector as ghost-like apparitions. While Lossoriawath attempted to lead Tyros to murder the Ravager as a child, the Guardian (known by Tyros as the Specter), pursued them. He finally ambushed Tyros and the Apparition in the Ravager's youth and teleported them to the blasted arena where they died. From there, as the Guardian fought Lossoriawath again, Tyros was able to disable the Phantom Projector and the Guardian and Lossoriawath faded away. When the Gaelix erupted from it's asteroid and Tyros created a time nova it's energy fluctuations temporarily activated the phantom projector. Before Tyros rammed the Gaelix, he looked up and saw the projector had been activated and that the Guardian was watching. They exchange feeble smiles before the ship hits, breaking the Phantom Projector and erasing the Guardian. When Aldrich's time machine explodes and the temporal singularity falls into a black hole, Aldrich and Guardian Danyg are pulled in. Danyg and Aldrich engage in a brief fistfight in a projection of the stone temple on Haond while Aldrich's body rewinds itself through its various forms beyond his control until he arrives at the human shape he held when he was the Guardian. One of the doors opens and the Guardian enters flanked by Tyros and Chane. He and the other two Guardian's express their shame for Aldrich and when Aldrich attempts to strike Tyros, the Guardian seizes him around the throat and with the help of Chane and Tyros hurls him through the black door at the end of the hall. In regard to Danyg, the Guardian gives his approval by saying he will be better than the last one. Then he leaves through his door. Legacy He, through the orders of his will, effectively creates himself and gives Tyros the inspiration to become the next Guardian. He becomes the first of a series of Guardians, each succeeding the first and watching all their friends die until nobody knows their true name anymore. When he and Tyros sacrificed themselves to kill the Gaelix, they were succeeded by Chane, largely regarded as one of the worst Guardians of all time, who soon was allowed to die by his successor, Aldrich. Disrupted Timeline After the Battle in the City that was mentioned above, the dragonlords were left in charge of a strange new world. The Guardian unifies the eastern part of America into a Republic under the dragonlord's supervision, as there is war in the west between the West American Collective and the Empire. The dragonlords withdraw from leadership after order is established, but the state soon undergoes a military reform set in motion by Syrenese general Ogden Bishop in response to raids from the Bantak and Marauders. The Guardian is given land that the Third have also laid claim to, and he manipulates the Third and Bantak and Marauders into wiping each other out, and is then dismayed at the bloodshed. The dragonlords together put an end to a nuclear war that destroys Hawaii and Russia, while the belligerents consisted of Collective colonizers and a previously unknown civilization in China/Mongolia. During this time, there are many conflicts and the dragonlords disperse to deal with them. The Guardian negotiates a peace treaty between the Lar and the IAU. The Guardian is then approached by Tyros and two other men who introduce themselves as Chane and Danyg. They inform the Guardian of his legacy and Chane fanboys over him. They also tell the Guardian the dark story of Aldrich, who they had attempted to kill in secret but now possesses a Thrakr magic staff. Disturbed by this warning, the Guardian is pulled away from a peace mission to the albinos by a telepathic message from the prime magician, saying that Aldrich, Sossofurwhath and the Primordial are working together. The Guardian flies to their location on his dragon, Xenobane, a Northern Dragon capable of communication. The Guardian reveals to it that he has been keeping a secret from the world, that star-gazers have observed the movement of giant forms in the night sky. There is something outside of Earth that lives still. When the Guardian arrives, he and Zach nearly come to blows arguing over whether the Primordial or the Tall Man is the greater threat at the moment. Guardian, Zach, the Prime Magician, Xenobane and Team Black attack Adam, Sossofurwhath, the Primordial and Aldrich, but they escape into space and send a message to the Elder Race. Impatient and running out of time with Adam dying, they use Sossofurwhath's ship to travel forward in time to the point where the Elder Race might have arrived. By this time, the Guardian has had time to return and board the brand-new Verdant Dawn alongside Suntol, the survivors of Team Black, Sean and Kelmadur. Aldrich is offended by the discovery that the Elder Race had been present, hidden, the whole time, waiting until the arrival of the second ship. The Guardian's crew enters and kills the Primordial. The Guardian asks what else there is in this composite universe and is teleported away. He awakens on the world of the dead, and recognizes the great toad Bokonob from myth. He travels and finds a crashed space freighter where none of the animated corpses will go. He shelters there until rescue by a warship of Ancients. He meets Amossondath, who informs him of the cosmic war being fought. A Tabbaroth dreadnought soon appears and decimates the unsuspecting Ancient warships. The Tabbaroth warships are all imbued with the power of Shun'Tabbarkot himself, and the Ancients have no way of finding a way to fight back in this strange new universe. The Guardian considers this and decides to tell Amossondath to send ships to Earth in search of Tkulthe. Meanwhile, Tkulthe has sent dreams to Gormiln and Lossoriawath which led to Lossoriawath finding the jewels of Devastation and Annihilation, and accidentally unleashing the Devastator and the Annihilator. This culminates in a series of events that shatters Katroiris and Tkulthe rises as the Ancient ship appears, just as he planned things to coincide. Lossoriawath is rescued from the sinking island by Ancient troops, and upon recognizing the Guardian orders him imprisoned. The Guardian fails to persuade his captors that Lossoriawath abandoned them at the end of the war with the Elder Race. The Guardian is trapped in a cell during the cosmic battle that soon takes place between the Tabbaroth, the Ancients, the Elder Race and Tkulthe outside of Earth. In the aftermath of this battle, Yondoffrinask, Shun'Tabbarkot and Tkulthe ally against the Elder Race and the Guardian is freed in order to act as an emissary to recruit other Old Beings. The Guardian watches the apocalyptic battle between the Elder Race and the Old Beings. The fallen ship-bodies of the Elder Race saturate zones of Earth with time radiation, and thanks to the manipulation of Tony Stone and Anthony Jackson by Nightmare, the S'cha-ckl'ueu Arc is activated in specific locations to bestow exposed individuals with special powers. The Guardian becomes a leading figure in the following event, known as the Guardian World War, during which he revives NgukGluk harvests Gobulin particles to inoculate regions against the Arc. Danyg, Fenrin and the Guardian drive off the last of the foreign Guardians, including Cody "Wraith" Simmons. After a team of five false Guardians recruited by the now mad Adam is tricked into worshipping the invaders Sean Clements once fought, the Guardian works with Koryu to protect their satellites from being destroyed by the stolen ship Ardent Conflagration. The Guardian soon learns of Sean's suicidal mission to Asia and follows him with Zach. He sends Xenobane with a message for Mason Cantrell. Stalked by an invader through a field of grass, the dragonlords are rescued by Cantrell's squad at the cost of Sean's life. The Guardian instructs the team to keep going, and shut down the gate that Sean warned them about. The Guardian and Zach enter the cave complex, and find the bodies of the possessed. Someone has beaten them there. Further up they find Wraith cradling the corpse of Yenaik, surrounded by mountains of bodies of the possessed. Sean arrives, now hosting the Eldritch One and kills the Adam-Ghost. Zach then shoots Sean, who topples through the portal. The Guardian draws on Zach until he realizes Sean had to die because he was hosting the Eldritch One. But without him no one can close the gate. To his surprise, Zach steps through the gate himself. The Guardian is attacked by the last ghost, and is fatally wounded, staggering to plant the last explosives and destroy the gate before he loses consciousness. When the Guardian awakes, the gate is gone and all the wreckage was sucked in as it collapsed. He feels he has cheated death, and privately asks Wilfred what it felt like when he hosted one of them. The Guardian sees Xenobane has returned with Necrobane and Ectobane and is delighted to see one of his friends is still alive at least. However, Xenobane seems frightened by him and is not willing to come near, refusing to communicate. Necrobane and Ectobane begin to howl when they realize their masters are gone, and fly in circles over head until Xenobane joins them, and they fly into the distance singing a sad harmony. The Guardian leads an attack on a massive underground complex staffed by Jack's human supremacist group after the defection of the Artificial Intelligence units. The city is destroyed when Kalve fails to kill Reeve and the Verdant Dawn crashes and detonates. The Guardian, unable to cope with his mounting guilt, confesses to Beth that several days ago they found Foray hiking out of a canyon, carrying the body of Danyg, and Foray revealed how Laura had cut their cable and sent them to their deaths. As the Guardian pulls his team out of the city, Beth tracks down Laura and kills her before she can kill Kalve. Beth then leaves Kalve to die. After Wraith deduces that the defection was due to the meddling of Nightmare once more, the Guardian makes the journey to the most dangerous place on Earth to seek council with Shadow King Merchess. However, his party is manipulated by Nightmare along the way and half of them leave in the night and attack Merchess. Dante himself kills the Shadow King while Vopor and Nairn are killed by the others. Darkness strikes down an attacker and flees. The Guardian finds the bodies of the Shadow King and his bodyguards. He enters the room of the Ultimate Tribunal and finds Dante and the other traitors dead, killed by the Tribunal after Nightmare had arranged a trial against them. The Tribunal, in the form of a living stone, is met with the Guardian's proposal to eliminate Nightmare as he is not of this universe. The Ultimate Tribunal considers this and makes sure the Guardian understands it is suicide. Nightmare begins to laugh. Suddenly, it all becomes clear. He is not the Guardian. The Guardian collapsed on the brink of death as he destroyed the gate. He, along with the rest of the wreckage, was pulled through when it collapsed. The last ghost, Shade, had taken his place by hosting him. His form, his memories. He had become the Guardian, but when the Tribunal strips him of his deception, he is able to turn his arm into the same smoky substance the ghosts are made from. The Shade Guardian, now possessing both sets of memories, decides that the he may not be the Guardian, but he is a Guardian and will uphold his values in a rejection of the brutal life he led before. He accepts the Tribunal's offer, expecting to surprise Nightmare. The last thing he sees before he fades away is Nightmare smiling, and wondering what last card the trickster had up his sleeve.